Wednesday, June 16, 2010

$2 Thread Spool Holder

I was at the fabric store yesterday and saw thread spool holders on sale for $10... Not bad, but I don't have ten extra dollars right now. Need to be extra-frugal for the summer, as we are down to one paycheck now, so... I decided I could make my own. Would you like to make one, too? Okay, here's how you do it:

You need a picture frame, skinny wood dowels, letter stickers, scrapbook paper, tissue paper, hot glue, and mod podge. I went to the dollar store and got the frame and a reed diffuser (I used the wood reeds instead of dowels) for a grand total of $2. Everything else was already waiting for me at home.

I promptly threw the fragrance part of the reed diffuser away, and you should, too. It is full of nasty chemicals that you do not want wafting up your nose and into your body! Seriously. "Fragrance" is not a happy thing to read on a label. What does it mean exactly? You don't know. But, you can bet it is a synthetic chemical. Okay, I will step down off the soap box now... You just need the reeds anyway. I made marks on mine and then cut them into roughly two inch pieces. They are easy enough to cut with scissors.

Next, I marked my picture frame to indicate where I wanted the reeds to be glued. My marks are two inches apart, which was a guess at the time but ended up being a good distance apart for the thread spools. You will probably want to remove your frame's glass at this point in the game.

Then, I began hot gluing the reeds onto my frame marks. This was more difficult than I expected... I guesstimated the "correct" angle for the reeds to be tilted. I learned that allowing the hot glue to harden just a bit before sticking the reed in it made me slightly less irritated by the whole gluing process. Only slightly.

I ended up using 13 reeds, so this part took a while.

Now you can pick out some scrapbook paper that you like and cut it to the size that will fit behind the glass of your frame. Find some alphabet stickers that match, too. If I had scrapbook paper that had some kind of sewing theme, I would've used that.... But, I didn't.

Set the paper and stickers aside, and bust out the mod podge! You were probably thinking, this thread holder is looking pretty ugly with these giant blobs of hot glue.... and it was. But, watch this. Tear tissue paper (that matches the scrapbook paper you chose) in thinnish strips. Decoupage them onto the front and sides of the frame, making sure you cover the glue blobs!

No, I did not decoupage over the "baby" that was on the frame. That actually fell off when I took off the plastic packaging of the frame. It is standing by with the paper and stickers right now. Wait for it...

I decoupaged the "baby" back on and the stickers I found in my stash. The holder is still wet in this photo, and I admit it doesn't look great. But, once you put the glass back in and use it for it's intended purpose...